Hubble Saved!

*Squeeee!*

It's official, there's going to be one more mission to service Hubble in 2008!

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/oct/HQ_06343_HST_announcement.html
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/10/31/hubble/index.html
http://www.hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2006/53/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6102690.stm
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15489217/

As I described in more detail elsewhere, there's a few things that I feel are crucial to a useful mission:

1. Boost the telescope's orbit


2. Replace the dying batteries


3. Replace the dying gyroscopes

Things like upgrading cameras are a bonus. Also, keep in mind that this mission does NOT solve the issue of what to do when it "dies" - re-enters the atmosphere. Parts of the main mirror will probably survive re-entry (that is, not burn up), and it's been estimated that there's up to a 1 in 700 chance of human fatality from an uncontrolled descent. NASA still has not addressed that concern.

x-posted

Science:1, Vampires:0

A cute little fluff article over on NY Times about why vampires and ghosts can't be real, just in time for Halloween. The link they give for the actual paper itself is incorrect, it can be found here instead. It's also not at the highest level, being more about physics ed than hardcore physics, but still amusing.

Accessable Evolution!

Not only are the entire works of Charles Darwin being scanned, converted to text, displayed side-by-side, and translated, they're also being made available in mp3 format for people with visual disabilities, or if you just want to listen to them on your iPod while jogging. Awesome!

Now if only they'd do the mp3's as a podcast so it'd be easier for me to download them all at once. :-P

Antibiotic Resistance iff Evolution

It's in print now, and as my friend who works at a dictionary company tells me, having something acknowledged in print is what it takes.

Bacteria have been steadily evolving to evade the action of antibiotics and infections are becoming more difficult to fight.

For instance, the CDC said, in 1972, only 2 percent of Staphylococcus aureus bacteria infections were drug-resistant but in 2004, 63 percent were.

In a few cases, no available antibiotics can cure an infection, and many more resist methicillin, a later-generation type of antibiotic. [ref]

Yeah!

This is not just a science issue for me, this one is PERSONAL. And I'm sure I'm repeating myself now, so feel free to skip. I've got a (non-contagious) skin condition called hidradenitis suppurativa (HS). Part of this involves bacterial infections in my apocrine sweat glands, primarily caused by staphylococcus aureus (staph). Staph is actually very common, something like 80% of the population have it sitting passively on our skin, and it doesn't do anything bad to them, but in me it gets inside my sweat pores and my body overreacts. So killing the staph should help treat my HS.

Keflex (cefalexin) is in the class of antibiotics called cephalosporins, which are part of the larger group called β-lactams. All β-lactams act by messing with bacterias' cell walls. I think I was prescribed Keflex when in my teens and college a few times, but it hasn't worked for ages. Amoxicillin is another type of β-lactam, and it used to work on me when I was in college and grad school, but sometime around 2004 we realized that it wasn't really doing anything anymore.

In case you're curious (or even if you're not), the term "penicillin" actually refers to a category of antibiotics including the originally discovered penicillin, and various derivatives of it including amoxicillin and methicillin. The penicillins and the cephalosporins are related in that they're both β-lactams and both act by breaking bacterial cell walls. Methicillin isn't actually used today, though it has lent its name to methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA, resistant staph). MRSA is actually any staph that's resistant to the penicillins.

Waitasec, amoxicillin is a penicillin. Amoxicillin doesn't work on me. I have staph. Holy smokes, I have MRSA! But wait, amoxicillin used to work... *thinks* *lightbulb!* Holy darwinism, Batman, I've evolved MRSA under my skin! ...ick... Yeah. And to make matters worse, having that MR stand for "multiple resistant" might be a more accurate description, b/c you may recall (or skim upwards) Keflex isn't a penicillin, it's a cephalosporin. And that too used to work but now doesn't, so my pretty pretty staph evolved that during my lifetime too.

THIS is one of the top reasons why I get really REALLY pissed when people deny evolution.

What I use these days is Levaquin (levofloxacin), part of the category of fluroquinolones, which is part of the quinalones. Unlike β-lactams, quinalones act by messing with the DNA and DNA transcription of bacteria. Interestingly, the use of Levaquin reveals another interesting feature of my MRSA: the FDA does not recommend Leva for MRSA, but only for the methicillin suscpetible strains. There is widespread incidence of quinalone resistant staph, possibly by overusage in European livestock. And yet, the MRSA that are in me are not resistant to quinalones despite being resistant to multiple forms of β-lactams. I see this as more evidence that my MRSA have evolved within me, though I haven't confirmed this with my dermatologist.

*sigh* That's enough ranting for me. Maybe I should take some microbiology courses. ;)

Geekin' in the free world

Woot, I just edited the Wikipedia pages on Mauna Kea Observatory and the 2006 Hawaii earthquake to contain the relevant overlapping information. I'm such a dork. :-P

DNA technology

I'm continually amazed about how DNA sequencing has (1) revolutionized the forensic science field, and (2) become so commonplace now. And yet, there's limits to what it can do.

Five years after 2,749 people died in the September 11 World Trade Center attacks, families of about 1,150 victims still do not know whether their loved ones' remains were recovered.

During the excavation of the 110-story twin towers, which began the evening of the attacks and lasted for nine months, about 20,000 pieces of human remains were found. The DNA in thousands of those pieces, many small enough to slip into a test tube, was too damaged by heat, humidity and time to yield matches in the many tests forensic scientists have tried over the years.

The city told victims' families last year that it was putting the project of making identifications on hold, possibly for years, until new DNA technology was developed. [ref]

That's a shame, that even thought they started work on recovering remains the very same day, still by the time they got to lots of it, it had been too long and the evidence was too damaged to positively identify much of it. And it continues to amaze me that they can then just put all the evidence on ice and wait until technology catches up to where they are now! It reminds me of "corpsicles," people cryogenically freezing themselves at the instant of death, hoping for a future reprieve of their illness.

I wonder if there's a way that the identification of these remains can go "open source," such as creating a SETI@Home-type project that runs automatically on your computer, or a Stardust@Home where humans volunteer their time to perform simple easily-trained tasks that will progress towards the final goal, or even just making all the data public domain and letting people try whatever they want with it, like HST or Spitzer data are public.

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